1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a maintenance and diagnostic data collecting method and system, and more particularly, to a method and a system for collecting data used for a remote maintenance/diagnosis of a manufacturing equipment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, for example, when a vender of a manufacturing equipment, such as a semiconductor manufacturing equipment or a liquid crystal manufacturing equipment, performs a remote maintenance/diagnosis of a manufacturing equipment of the vender which is operating at a customer's site, the vender collects data regarding the manufacturing equipment subjected to the maintenance/diagnosis (hereinafter simply referred to as subject equipment) from the subject equipment per se or from an intermediary device, such as a group controller, which keeps data sent from the subject equipment, to a remote maintenance center at the vender's site. The customer's site and the vender's site are connected via a communication network, such as a public circuit, a private circuit, or the Internet.
The remote maintenance center at the vender's site uses the data collected regarding the manufacturing equipment operating at the customer's site for the maintenance of the manufacturing equipment or for the diagnosis of the manufacturing equipment. Accordingly, when an abnormality occurs during a process of the subject equipment due to a malfunction of the subject equipment per se, a cause of the abnormality can be identified.
However, in reality, the cause of the abnormality occurring during the process of the subject equipment is not limited to the malfunction of the subject equipment per se. For example, a malfunction of a device other than the subject equipment in a preceding process or malfunctions of other devices, such as a measurement equipment and a testing equipment, may result in the abnormality occurring during the process of the subject equipment. In addition, an event occurring when the subject equipment is off-line may result in the abnormality occurring during the process of the subject equipment after the subject equipment is switched to online. In these cases, analyzing the data regarding the subject equipment collected at the remote maintenance center at the vender's site does not lead to the identification of the cause of the abnormality of the subject equipment.
In order to perform the remote maintenance/diagnosis of the subject equipment at the remote maintenance center even in the above-described cases, it is effective to use data deriving from a device other than the subject equipment, such as process result data resulting from a process of a testing equipment, and to use data regarding a manufacturing execution, such as work-in-process tracking information, for example.